confusion, flinging
their heels and tails high into the air, their heads to earth.
A poplar in the immediate foreground was like an ink stroke on
burnished tin. Then the picture vanished, leaving the darkness so
intense that Gabriel worked entirely by feeling with his hands.

He had stuck his ricking-rod, or poniard, as it was indifferently
called--a long iron lance, polished by handling--into the stack,
used to support the sheaves instead of the support called a groom
used on houses. A blue light appeared in the zenith, and in some
indescribable manner flickered down near the top of the rod. It
was the fourth of the larger flashes. A moment later and there was
a smack--smart, clear, and short. Gabriel felt his position to be
anything but a safe one, and he resolved to descend.

Not a drop of rain had fallen as yet. He wiped his weary brow, and
looked again at the black forms of the unprotected stacks. Was his
life so valuable to him after all? What were his prospects that he
should be so chary of running risk, when important and urgent labour
could not be carried on without such risk? He resolved to stick to
the stack. However, he took a precaution. Under the staddles was a
long tethering chain, used to prevent the escape of errant horses.
This he carried up the ladder, and sticking his rod through the clog
at one end, allowed the other end of the chain to trail upon the
ground. The spike attached to it he drove in. Under the shadow of
this extemporized lightning-conductor he felt himself comparatively
safe.

Before Oak had laid his hands upon his tools again out leapt the
fifth flash, with the spring of a serpent and the shout of a fiend.
It was green as an emerald, and the reverberation was stunning. What
was this the light revealed to him? In the open ground before him,
as he looked over the ridge of the rick, was a dark and apparently
female form. Could it be that of the only venturesome woman in the
parish--Bathsheba? The form moved on a step: then he could see no
more.

"Is that you, ma'am?" said Gabriel to the darkness.

"Who is there?" said the voice of Bathsheba.

"Gabriel. I am on the rick, thatching."

"Oh, Gabriel!--and are you? I have come about them. The weather
awoke me, and I thought of the corn. I am so distressed about
it--can we save it anyhow? I cannot find my husband. Is he with
you?"

"He is not here."

"Do you know where he is?"

"Asleep in the barn."

"He